KP turns his delusion into an art form

KEVIN PIETERSEN just won’t be put down. Having been out of the headlines for several days, he gave a toe-curling interview in which he said: ‘I know the current captain would love to have me in the England team.’ To which Eoin Morgan, the one-day skipper, swiftly responded: ‘I’m very happy with the squad of players I have.’ An ordinary man might have been crushed, but KP seemed to take it as a challenge.

So he promptly did something far more disturbing. He engaged the services of one Mick Squires, who is apparently ‘well regarded in the tattoo community’ and was once dubbed ‘The Wizard of Oz’ by Tattoo Master magazine.

And Mick, operating at a private clinic in Melbourne, drew a map of the world which started on KP’s chest and stretched around his ribs to his back. Picked out in stars, like angry red weals, were the places in which he scored his hundreds for England. The effect was grotesque.

Now you may have your own views on tattooing. Personally, I’ve never understood the practice of allowing a chap who can’t draw to scrawl across your body in ink which can never be erased; but each to his own.

Yet Pietersen’s case feels different. It is as if he is actively refusing to recognise reality. Like one who listens only to the twittering sycophants who tell him he has been grievously wronged, that one day English cricket will come to its senses. So Pietersen, wilfully deluded, takes himself off to Mick the Wizard. He then ambles topless along Bondi Beach, gauchely posing for the passing snappers. As the visiting psychiatrist remarked of the great Basil Fawlty: ‘There’s enough material there for an entire conference.’